Skip to main content

Mechanic Monday: Guild Manager Update!

Hello and welcome back to the blog! Since my last post where I laid out a milestone checklist for getting a prototype of Guildmanager (fka Fantasy GM Squared) to GenCon, I put my head down, worked hard, and… actually pulled it off! I finished making components for, and actually printed, the nicest prototype I’ve ever made.  I did NOT figure out a VP component, and I did not get as far as doing the rulebook in Canva, but I DID make all the other non-Hero components (including the double-sided Streak markers at the very last minute) and expanded the rulebook with diagrams.  And I DID re-learn Canva enough to (after a half hour of truly baffling false starts) make a Sell Sheet like I planned to.  It even had a QR code to the website I finally got off my ass and built/paid for.

While the prototype went to GenCon, it did not get demo’d, but that’s okay.  Just hitting my deadline is a pleasant surprise for me, and while it came down to the wire, the important bits of the design are solid enough that they’re not likely to get canned right away.  I got sleeves for the cards, and will do a bit more touch up work and then get this puppy into playtests.

Takeaways:

  • Boy a deadline helps
  • Everything takes longer than expected, be it difficulty, distraction, or too many options; budget extra time
  • I hadn’t meaningfully worked on the game in almost three years; I have to trust but verify the work of my past self
  • A little bit of work every day builds up momentum better than a big design day, but towards the end I absolutely needed a few multi-hour blocks, because…
  • Relearning and troubleshooting software eats up time
  • That said, nanDeck, SquareSpace, Canva, all MVPs

Next steps:

  • Make backs for non-Hero component cards
  • Maybe cut the Free Agency subsystem for the time being?
  • Just in case, come up with more Legacies to replace the ones that mention Free Agency
  • Sleeve prototype
  • Playtest with IronRise, game night friends, and hockey teammates
  • Build in Tabletop Simulator, host build on website
  • Nice Canva design of rules
  • Sign up to Demo/playtest at Big Bad Con?
  • Just submitted an event proposal for it there so we’ll see!

All of these are for a 1.5 month timeline; which I think is doable? Might take Ed up on help with the Tabletop Simulator mod, maybe get a full design day on the books, and not just two hours for playtesting.  The rest is definitely doable and relies on tools I’ve already gotten back up to speed on.

I think that’s it for this one.  Got my ducks in a row, just got to keep up the steady work, find some of that 2020 consistency but layer on interactions with others.  Til next time!



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

TTRPG Tuesday: Three Means Of Resolving

Hi it’s another TTRPG Tuesday! First of the year.  Let’s get right into it. Saw a challenge on Twitter to make some resolution mechanics.  I can do those! Here we go: Hand to Hand The player performing the action and the person running the game or otherwise opposing the action both put their dominant fists toward one another, bounce them three times to get a rhythm, and reveal a number with their fingers, 0-5.  Sum the two numbers, and if the number is greater than 5, subtract six, so that the final number is always between 0 and 5.  On a 0, the action fails catastrophically, on a 1-2 it fails, 3-4 it succeeds, on a 5 it succeeds spectacularly.  The player taking the action starts the game with all five fingers up on their non-dominant hand; after an attempt, they may lower fingers on that hand to add to the sum of the attempt. Ex. Alice attempts to seduce Cat’s character over to the coup conspirators.  They put their dominant hands together (right for ...
Post a Comment
Read more

TTRPG Tuesday: Campaigning

  Hey it's TTRPG Tuesday, let's see if I get something written before sleep overtakes me. I'm still on that Channelers kick, but today I want to talk about a possible campaign path: The Magpie Offensive.  I see this as a military campaign where the PCs are conscripted, volunteers, or mercenaries for an army that is marching to quell Spirit threats and unite the region under a protectorate. There should be free RP sections as interludes between missions, and missions should be chosen by the party.  The army ensures loyalty with intangible rewards as well as artifact items. NOTE: This whole thing is being designed with the Rascal article on militarization in ttrpgs in mind. What is the thrust of the campaign? It's fundamentally one of conquest.  How do I encourage characters to question their presence and their complicity? How much interpersonal violence is an acceptable price to pay for environmental justice? How can party composition affect all this from jump? H...
Post a Comment
Read more

Mechanic Monday: Winding Down an Engine Builder

  Welcome back to Mechanic Monday! Been a minute hasn't it? Remember when I did one of these a week for a year? 2020 was such a productive time! Totally worth the complete decay of my sense of self! Today I’m going to go about things a little backwards.  Normally I start with the mechanical kernel, mock up how it would look in a hypothetical game, and then do a little theorycrafting around it.  This time, I uh already have a v1.0 prototype.  So let's start there. Gradually Shorter Engines In Paper Moth Dynasty, you play a young Monarch, with nine Role cards flipped to either their Sun or Moon side.  In the first round you will place 7 of the 9 available cards in your Court tableau, then Exile a card and play the next round with one fewer card to draw and one fewer to play, then do the same again before the third and final round.  You will therefore place 7 cards in the first round, 6 in the second, and 5 in the third round. So engine builders (and th...
Post a Comment
Read more